


all things devour

by beastepic (arainthatbindshearts)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Admitting Their Feelings (finally), Established Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Kink Exploration, Kneeling in the cathedral but NOT for the goddess, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Dynamics, Relationship Study, i hear you ask but what kink and the truth is i'm not sure myself, set some time after the almyran troops arrive during verdant wind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arainthatbindshearts/pseuds/beastepic
Summary: “You could do anything you want to me.” The words come slow, something that Lorenz has pushed down so far it takes time to dig it out. “And I would let you.”A whole kingdom may kneel for its prince, but only one man kneels for Claude.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	all things devour

This is how it begins, though Claude does not know it yet: 

“The rest of the reinforcements will be here by the end of next week,” Nader says, reading from his report. It is one late evening, after a meeting that stretched and stretched. But now few remain—this is not for everyone’s ears. “I was thinking the ceremony could be the next day. Right after. Get the pompous show out of the way as soon as possible.” 

Claude is on his way to agreeing, when, “The ceremony?” Lorenz asks, cocking his head. 

“Right, I didn’t tell you. It’s this…” Claude sighs, puffing out his cheeks. “This mandatory thing, sort of ritual I guess, expected of the troops that join the service of their prince.” He clears his throat. Lorenz has been awfully understanding of his identity. He did lock himself in the greenhouse for two and a half days and refused to open the door to Claude, in the process finally rescuing all the inhabitants that were salvageable, pouring magic and magic into the poor scorched plants and doing away with the rest, which Teach had thought would take months of hard work. He’d emerged swaying on his feet and then slept for one entire day. But nothing seems to have changed between them. Claude is waiting for...something. 

Presently, Lorenz narrows his eyes. “You mean you. You are,” he frowns as if the word carried a bitter tang, “the prince.” 

“Well, yes.” 

“And what is this ceremony about?” 

It is Nader who answers, almost surprising Claude. Lorenz has that dangerous effect of taking all of Claude’s attention for himself. It becomes a problem, when he is tired after a full day of work and can only think about what the night will bring forth. 

Yesterday he’d been the one to knock on Lorenz’s door with a poor excuse to go over some reports. The night had ended—or begun, depending on how you look at it—with Lorenz coming apart on his fingers, shaking and gasping as Claude kept rubbing inside of him with curled fingers, nibbling the sensitive skin of his neck as goosebumps broke all over Lorenz’s bare skin, his whole body an arched wire clenching and releasing. Until the only thing that seemed to be left in him was the loose laughter of sated satisfaction, worth a thousand sore wrists. 

Focus. Focus. Right. 

“...and that’s about it, really. Did I miss anything, boy?” Nader is saying, bringing Claude back to reality. 

“Right, yeah. Yes. That’s it. Some kneeling, some oaths, and some speeches. In Almyran, sorry about that. I can translate if you ask nicely, though,” he adds, quirking a smile Lorenz’s way. 

Lorenz doesn’t rise to it. “Kneeling? That’s…” A line appears between his brows as he searches for the correct word. 

He supposes Lorenz has not much experience with all those ritualistic customs. There was no kneeling when he became leader of the Alliance, which is the closest thing Leicester has to royalty. The formality is more extended in Faerghus, if he remembers correctly. 

“It’s just tradition.” Claude shrugs. 

It seems to jolt Lorenz out of his contemplation. “Of course,” he says, though some unnamed thought still lurks in the depths of his eyes. “I look forward to witnessing it, if it is allowed.” 

Nader has no consideration for his irrepressible urge to carve up whatever Lorenz is holding back, and so he barrels on with the last of the preparations and Claude finds himself forcibly pulled away from what has remained unsaid. 

Later, he thinks. He will get Lorenz to tell him later. 

Later, though, Lorenz is the one to knock on his door. And he has no flimsy excuses, which is a first—not that he ever really needed them. He shoves Claude on the bed before he can string two words together, and Claude soon forgets everything and thinks of nothing. Nothing but the shape of Lorenz’s mouth, his eight fingers and two thumbs carving a path of sensation on his skin. 

  
  
  


And so the reinforcements arrive, the ceremony traipses on. 

Claude wastes three days watching Lorenz avoiding him with no clue as to why before searching him out. 

Because he's been paying attention, he knows just where to look.

“It is rare to see  _ you _ here.”

Lorenz doesn't answer immediately. Not until Claude has walked the rest of the way, down the aisle and up to the first pew where Lorenz sits, his shoulders rigid. 

"It seems to work for Marianne,” Lorenz flatly says. “I thought, why not.” He does not look away from the wreckage that was once the altar, as if daring the goddess to materialize before their eyes the moment he blinks. 

Claude sits next to him, not showing the second he inwardly falters. Not a week has passed since the last time Lorenz was in his bed, but they’ve barely exchanged more than three sentences after the Almyran reinforcements arrived. He guesses he can’t go wrong, now, leaving a considerate stretch of empty space between them. “How is it going?” 

A sharp sniff of irritation is all he gets as answer. Fair enough: he knows Lorenz’s relationship with religion is rocky at best. 

"I don't think it works so well for people like us,” Claude says after an unhurried moment of quiet. 

He can only see Lorenz's face in profile, but it is enough to watch the repressed line of the mouth, the way it pulls down as he mulls over the words. "Like us?" is what Lorenz finally settles on.

"We're not so good with blind faith, are we?” he asks, resting an elbow on the back of the pew. “I know I'm not." 

One corner of Lorenz's lips twitches. "This is the first time I hear you say you’re not good at something.” For a second there is real amusement in that smile, but it quickly fades. “It doesn't seem very holy,” he adds in a frustrated tone. “To give answers only to those capable of that.” 

“Is that what you want? Answers?”

“What I want…” A scoff. “Maybe.”

The silence stretches between them, now too weighted by the things Claude is holding back. It’s not like they have a formal arrangement, but it had seemed an unspoken agreement, of sorts, to spend the night together whenever their responsibilities allowed. He is not sure where he’s gone wrong, that for the past three days Lorenz dashes out of the room almost before he’s done adjourning the meeting, or that he eats but two bites and leaves the dining hall without even making eye contact. 

He can’t take the not knowing. “Is this about the Almyran reinforcements?” he asks abruptly. 

It earns him a sidelong glance. “Am I so predictable already? How I must bore you." The short tone leaves him a bit at a loss. Lorenz goes on. “I was watching from the gallery, as they presented their respects to their prince.” 

Claude suppresses a frown. That cannot be what’s bothering him—the ceremony was scheduled weeks ago. 

“Kneeling for you, swearing the oath of fealty to join your battalion. It looked almost…religious.” He whips his head around to search Claude’s face. “I thought Almyra favoured the prostration?” 

It’s clearly more than a simple observation. Claude answers, cautiously. “That’s only owed the king.” 

An icy smile tells him he made a mistake. Of what magnitude remains to be seen. “Of course,” Lorenz grits out. 

“Lorenz, I have no idea...” 

“No, you don’t. You have never had any idea what it feels like.” He runs a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic tell of agitation, his breath shaky. “All I wanted when we were in the academy was to be better than you, to win at a game you seemed to be playing by yourself. And then it was out of my reach—you were out my reach. So I thought… I thought, all along, that I had a chance at least to be your equal. I wanted to stand by your side.”

“You are my equal, you stand with me,” Claude says, recoiling. “I would never ask you to act deferentially to me because of my blood! What are you—” 

“Maybe that would make it simpler,” Lorenz cuts in. “If we acted as befits our stations. If we stopped…”

The sentence does not land any more gently for it remaining unfinished. “If we stopped what?” Claude asks in a thready voice, instead of getting up and leaving to avoid the answer as a childish part of him wants to. 

Lorenz keeps his gaze on the tiles under his feet. “There certainly will be no shortage of people to warm your bed when you return to Almyra.” 

They hadn’t used any of the scarce resources to repair the caved-in roof of the eastern aisle, but Claude knows the cold now freezing him has little to do with the dusk breeze that comes through that hole. 

Warm your bed. Is that all it is, then, when their nights together are the one pocket of safety he's felt since the war started? Maybe since before: back when he realised the world had a cruel, ugly side that reared its head during the nights, moonlight glinting off blades and blood. For once, there's no place for any of that, not along with the frantic press of bodies, nor with the soft brushes of lips he steals as Lorenz is half asleep, or the middle-of-the-night warmth of waking next to him. Warm your bed, like the coldest he's ever felt aren't those times—few, precious times—Lorenz falls asleep in his arms and he realises his bare neck is just as vulnerable as any other's, and if he weren't weak he'd try to put another armour on him instead of taking it off. 

He can't say any of that. He doesn't know how. 

“You don’t want someone warming your bed during an Almyran summer, trust me.” The smile feels crooked on his face, but he knows, from Lorenz’s glare, that the words come out sounding how he intends them to sound. Detached, glib. He also realises, when he can’t hold Lorenz’s gaze for more than a second, that if he keeps this up he will lose him, lose whatever frail thing they had managed to tend to despite the violence of war all around them. “Is that what this thing between us is, though?” He looks down at his splayed hands. “A convenience, stress relief? Answer me.”

“What else can it be? You're going to leave. You are going where I cannot follow.” He can hear Lorenz biting on those words a tad too late, his teeth clenching on the shocked silence that rings loud between them. “I thought,” Lorenz says, voice controlled, gathering himself, “I had made my peace with it, because I had a responsibility—I was finally going to become Archduke. And it is what I want and I know I will be good at it, but then… Then I see all those men and women pledging their lives to you. All I could think about was how jealous I was. And the most pathetic thing is that I wasn't jealous of you. I was jealous of them.” 

“Lorenz,” he calls, trying to touch his arm to get him to look at him. He needs to see his eyes, to understand what this is, because it seems Lorenz wants the opposite of stopping, wants—

Lorenz jerks away from him, rising from the pew and putting a safe distance between them. “No. Dispense with the niceties. Do you know how— How confusing this is?" He's started pacing back and forth in front of the altar. "It is,” he spits out the word, “mortifying, to not be able to stop thinking about—about—wanting to give someone complete control over you. Where does this—this weakness even come from? Instead of standing opposite you on equal terms, all I wanted, for that one infinite second was to be one of them. For you to stand over me, above me. 

“And I  _ can’t _ stop  _ thinking _ about it. Especially when you’re right there.” His frantic laugh echoes. “It feels like the ground is shifting, and everything I do is wrong. Isn't that why people go to their knees for the goddess, to pray and have someone tell them what to do and how to do it, excusing any shortcomings that way? That is all I want. Just. To know what to do about this.”

Claude realises, with almost detached clarity, that he could—should—play his part. Aloof and insouciant words come ready at his lips. If this is such a hassle for you, let's stop seeing each other. Easy. He's always known distractions to be dangerous when it comes to pursuing his goals. 

Trying to convince himself that Lorenz is no more than a distraction is a lie too vast to believe. 

So, instead, what comes out, one breathless sentence that carries more than confusion with it, is this, “You’re saying you want me to tell you what to do?” 

Lorenz’s pacing stops without warning. With his back to Claude, all he can see is the strained line of his back, his shoulders stiff as he presses a hand to his face. 

“I am saying…” comes the muffled voice. “I am saying I want to stop thinking. For one single day, for one single moment, I want it to be simple. Make it simple.” 

Something catches in Claude’s chest, a feeling whose name he knows not. 

He tightens his grip on the pew until his knuckles complain. When he lets go of the seat it is to walk up to Lorenz. Claude’s footfalls echoing in the empty cathedral, Lorenz turns to watch him approach, growing tenser and tenser with every one of Claude’s steps, until, in the silence, they stand inches apart. 

And Claude says, “Kneel, then.” His voice scratches past his throat, almost unrecognizable. Not that there is anything remotely familiar about this situation. But it is the first time Claude has seen Lorenz this upset. The mottled flush filling his pale face, the hands clenched into fists, they show what it is taking him, to stand there and explain instead of doing something simpler, like hiding it away. 

At his words, Lorenz’s face alters by stages. Shock, disbelief, shock again—something bright flashes across his eyes, quickly gone; thoroughly smothered into that distraught confusion again. 

“Just—kneel,” Claude repeats, because he has nothing else to offer. “I’ll do what you want—I’ll make it simple.” Theirs is not a relationship where they give comfort to one another. He isn't sure Lorenz even wants that from him right now. Maybe someday, maybe not so distant a day. 

And this time, this time the spark takes: Lorenz’s face comes alight, a mix of wary relief and clashing tension as the previous unbearable strain lifts, disappears—to be replaced by this new one. Make it simple. A frantic plea that he thought Claude would not listen to, perhaps. On its own, an order that he might not have realised Claude would be compelled to obey. Even not knowing what he’s doing, even knowing that this fragile moment might break and leave him with glass piercing his hands, if Claude can give him this, he will. He would clutch the bloody pieces as long as it kept Lorenz from smashing it all to the ground. 

With the frantic pace they usually favour now gone, what stands between them is nothing like before. Nothing like that first time after Ailell, with ashes smearing their clothes and a searing pain down Claude’s arm that dimmed every time Lorenz circled his hips above him, working Claude’s cock deeper into himself; every time his throat failed to contain those sounds of pleasure for which Claude would have received countless wounds to hear again. Nothing like the second, third, the rest of them: memories that for all their differences merge into the shape of desperation. Because he’d had to see Lorenz’s close calls across the length of the battlefield, tasting the powerlessness of distance; because somewhere along the line he’d stopped being able to believe his eyes, his ears, and his heart beat a frantic note in his chest until he put his hands to Lorenz’s body, until he knew the bruises and cuts there drew hisses from his lips—because he had lived another day to feel them. 

The lack of urgency stresses the new reality of their situation, at least for Claude. Against the tumultuous hurricane in Lorenz’s mind, against the rapid rise and fall of his chest as his eyes lock onto Claude’s for one, two breaths, Claude feels a sort of calm engulf him. Shadows are starting to coil into the corners of the cathedral where the last faint light of the day cannot reach, and despite that he sees everything clearly. Sees the faint tremor of doubt in Lorenz’s lips, his eyelashes fluttering as he searches Claude’s face. Under those long lashes, his eyes are very dark, unreadable. A triangle of light catches the place where they stand; it glints off the silver latchings of Lorenz’s jacket and underscores the rapid pace of his lungs.

This close, a soothing scent of rose and lavender wafts towards him in tentative tendrils, sinking past skin. It is hard to resist moving forward and finally bridging that distance. 

Then Lorenz breathes in one deep intake of air, as if steeling himself. Without a sound, as his shadow recedes across the broken tiles of the floor, Lorenz sinks to his knees. 

Claude hears his own throat click shut as he swallows. At the sight, as always, at the anticipation—but this time there is more than that. Something else pours over him, hot and sweltering across every inch of skin. No, deeper than that. 

Remaining still,  _ waiting,  _ Lorenz looks up at him, his hair spilling backwards to limn his face with the reflection of the candles that perennially burn by the altar. His eyes are wide with vulnerability, but the tilt of his chin is more familiar; it underlines a challenge. I want it to be simple, Lorenz had said. Does Claude? 

He brushes his fingertips across the arch of a high cheekbone, daubing the pale skin with trembling shadows: that damascened movement the only one on Lorenz’s face. Not even his eyes move, stalwart on Claude’s. 

“You’ve knelt in this cathedral before,” he says, unsure where the words come from. 

“In prayer,” is the answer that washes against the inside of his wrist. He doesn't need to add under what circumstances it was, or tell Claude about the disappointments that the imposed worship of the goddess has meant for him, the lack of fulfillment. 

Claude lowers his hand to cup Lorenz’s jaw, tracing a path to his lips with the barest pressure of a thumb. That hint of contact is enough to make Lorenz shudder, his head moving one infinitesimal inch to press closer to Claude’s touch. 

He has tried before, to memorize the sensation of Lorenz’s lips on his skin. He’s woken, more than once, with the marks to prove it—on his neck, usually; once on his shoulder, where Lorenz had bitten to muffle the moans Claude had driven from his lungs—but recalling the exact sensation of them has always eluded him, almost driven him mad. A tune faintly heard, just out of reach the moment they part after rushed encounters in the dark. 

He hasn’t stopped trying. 

“There is nobody here to pray to, just me,” Claude says.

Who needs prayers? In this ruined cathedral, who needs the gods? There is not an ounce of blind faith in either of them; it doesn't mean they can't recognize something holy. He would be a fool, not to give everything for something that feels as right as this: Lorenz's unflinching determination shaped, as he looks up at Claude from his knees, into a naked faith that would frighten him, if the selfsame emotion weren't mercilessly coursing through him. Lorenz does not flinch away either from what he sees reflected in Claude's eyes. 

“So now I kneel for a king?” asks Lorenz.

With an effort, Claude keeps his hand steady, the pad of his thumb on Lorenz’s lower lip. “I’m not your king.” 

“Something in your voice seems to say  _ Not yet.”  _

“No. Not now, not ever. If you kneel, you do so for Claude, for Khalid. You kneel for a man like any other. You find that shameful, don’t you?” 

A faint tremor runs through Lorenz, resistance forced over the impulse to tilt his face away from Claude’s relentless stare. His soft grip may not keep Lorenz in place, but something else does. It is what pulls the next reticent answer from Lorenz. 

“You are not like any others.” The sentence rings not adulation but fact. Claude feels it like a blow: they don’t—didn’t—speak of this. “Not to me.” It is easy to tell, with a muscle jumping in Lorenz’s jaw, that he does not like to admit it. But the moment he fell to his knees something gave. Claude wonders how much, exactly. 

It is why he decides to press it, with an effort putting aside for later the way the admission makes an unnamed emotion well up inside him. “And still you think you shouldn’t kneel for me, don’t you? That is what is mortifying to you.” Shame, he’s realised, is a part of it. It is what is bleeding into all that tension coiling Lorenz’s frame tight into a live wire of nerves. 

Lorenz’s throat gives a convulsive swallow. Once, twice. “Yes,” he says, no more than a whisper. “You could do anything you want to me.” The words come slow, something that Lorenz has pushed down so far it takes time to dig it out. “And I would let you.” 

A burrowing pressure carves a path inside Claude’s chest. He cradles Lorenz’s head in both his hands, sleek hair spilling between his fingers. “You are. You are letting me.” Despite what he says, he has never felt less in control in his life. He thinks his hands would be shaking, were they not gripping Lorenz like a lifeline. Yet Lorenz is still looking at him with those wide, liquid eyes. “Simple, isn’t that simple?”

It is as he speaks that the full meaning of what they’re doing sinks in—or, it is as he understands that he is compelled to speak. One way or another, if Lorenz’s desires surprised him, it is nothing compared to the surprise at his own eagerness. He would have thought the world was pulling a fast one on him, if you'd told him he'd let himself get lost in this crystalline yielding. There is a curiosity, almost morbid in its intensity, to reach the limits of what they are doing, to understand how the two of them fit in this context. And the only way to go forward is to let the same light bathe them both; Claude can’t help feeling exposed beyond what he usually allows. 

Lorenz may find it at odds with himself, to want this. But what does it say about Claude that he has no second thoughts about cracking himself open along with Lorenz? The words pour forth, unthought, unbidden. “It’s up to me what happens now.” 

Nothing comes out when Lorenz parts his lips. For a moment not even breath, as if the very same air has melted into a solid shape between his lips. His chest heaves. “Yes,” Lorenz says, in a different way from before. 

In, by now, a very familiar way that has chased Claude into the deep hours of the nights he’s spent alone. 

He can’t help it. “You’re really into this.” 

“I told you—” Lorenz bristles.

Claude arches his eyebrows. “You think I can’t tell what you like, even if you don’t tell me?” He does nothing to hide the keen smile that pulls up the corners of his lips, though a distant part of his brain wonders if it looks as wolfish as it feels stretching his lips. Lorenz’s eyes move down his face and back up again. “I know that you like it when I push you against the mattress and keep you still, keep your hands trapped above your head so that you can barely move. Just take what I give you, hard, and fast, because that too is how you prefer it, isn’t it? And I can always tell the next day when you still feel it, feel me.” He’s lost count of how many times they’ve slept together, but it’s been enough to figure some things out. To get confirmation now, in the bright flush intensifying, in the glassy eyes almost wholly black, stokes the insatiable urge to know more. “No. Don’t close your eyes.” 

An army hangs on his every word, and commanding it has never felt like this. It’s not about power, it’s not about control—or if it is, it’s so fleeting as to remain almost irrelevant. What lasts is the next second, and the next, when Lorenz keeps looking up at him and waits. And waits. That demanding, open look of trust. 

What is it like for Lorenz? How does it feel to put yourself in the hands of another? And could Claude do it? But then again, he thinks, this is but an exchange; choosing to share the susceptibilities that make them. After all, Claude has never liked being in the spotlight, preferring to maneuver neatly from the sidelines, and though Lorenz’s attention is the brightest beacon he’s ever encountered, there is no intention in him to recoil. The thought that Lorenz is seeing him as revealed as he is seeing Lorenz ignites something in him. 

As if reading his mind, Lorenz says, “And you?” He licks his lips. They stand out, very red and lush against his fine skin. “Do you… Do you like this?” 

Something like laughter, except too breathless, too fond, escapes him. “Me?” He brushes Lorenz’s hair behind his ear, and lets his hand chart the planes of Lorenz’s face with his fingertips: one of the artful eyebrows, the uncompromising bridge of his nose. Slowly, as he’s been too afraid to do before, he follows the blush from a haughty cheekbone down to the sweet arch of the lips, so often before shaping a disdainful line but now pliant, yearning. It is useless to try biting back the exhilaration. “I like you on your knees, but you knew that already.” He’d aimed for jaunty affirmation, not naked honesty, but Lorenz doesn’t seem to mind the latter. “You’ve known since the first night you came into my tent.” 

“This is different,” Lorenz insists.

"Oh yes, it is." 

He doesn’t wait for an answer before pushing his thumb inside Lorenz’s mouth. Sudden, but not rough. Lorenz draws in a sharp gasp, and the warmth of his heavy breathing washes across Claude’s skin as he teases his wet lips, barely pressing in to feel the ridges of his front teeth, noticing the tremor of instinct fighting inaction. Until Claude tells him to use his mouth. 

And Lorenz holds nothing back. The wet heat of his mouth and the uncompromising caress of his tongue against the pad of his finger, tracing callouses, finding sensitive skin, urges a pulse all the way through Claude’s nerve-endings, cementing the knot of need in his gut that has been there since Lorenz went to his knees. There is a promise in that suction, in that humming eagerness from Lorenz’s throat that presses his thumb to the roof of his mouth, and Claude is only made of flesh. 

Lorenz’s eyes travel down his body, perceptive of where he is visibly hard and straining inside his pants—has actually been for some time now, thank you. Equal parts suggestive and smug, Lorenz raises an expressive eyebrow. Gods. Those eyebrows that, out there, in that world to which they do not belong right now, ruthlessly silence councilors with the merest hint of a frown. None of them have seen this amused tilt, which set Claude’s heart apace long before he was willing to admit. 

“Something to say?” he asks, retrieving his thumb to give Lorenz room to answer. 

“That does not look comfortable.” 

“You’re always in such a hurry,” Claude laughs. 

“You haven’t complained before.” It is almost sly. And it is all Claude might have waited for, once, before unlacing his pants and sinking into the welcoming relief of Lorenz’s mouth. That’s not what this is about right now, even if the nervous tension has mostly left Lorenz, Claude thinks he can push for more. 

“No, it’s not a complaint. But I wondered…” He grips Lorenz’s chin tightly and, leaning down, speaks to the shell of his ear. “I wondered how it would be, to take you slowly. Inch by inch.” As Claude straightens, Lorenz tilts forward to catch his mouth, but Claude moves swiftly and away, and he has to brace a hand on Claude’s thigh to keep his balance, biting his untouched lip. Any other time, that denial of contact would have persuaded Lorenz into taking the reins, grabbing handfuls of Claude’s hair to keep him in place. His inability to do so now sinks into him slowly, and Claude watches that impulse bleed into simmering obedience. “Good. You stay right there.” It is almost visible, the way one more knot of constriction eases away as Lorenz falls back to his previous position. Not frustrated but obeying; expectant. 

“I could tell you to do anything, and you’d do it, right?” He glides his hand down to graze the sensitive skin of Lorenz’s lovely neck, right above the place where the collar bars his way downward, before wrapping his hand around it, the barest insinuation of pressure, not even a grasp. His fingertips slide beneath the folds of the tightly knotted cravat, seeking the pulse wildly beating there. He usually maps out Lorenz’s neck with his lips, wet open-mouthed kisses that make Lorenz melt against him, wringing sweet gasps from him. The assertive grip has much the same effect. “Then I want you to touch yourself,” he finally says, controlling his breathing. “Show me what you’ve been doing these past few nights without me.” A muscle spasms in Lorenz’s neck. Resistance or the antechamber to compliance? They haven’t done this with each other before, substituting touch for the weight of heated glances. “Well?” 

One more aching, cresting point of hesitation that peaks—thrillingly melts, into the fluid roll of a shoulder, the deliberate bent of an elbow and wrist, the pull of fingers on laces. Almost languid, one might say, so unhurried the movement is, so certain in its acquiescence, except he can hear Lorenz’s breath hitching, see the smallest of tremors in the fingers hindered by arousal, not as graceful as they usually are. 

He’s been hard for a while now, but at the sight of Lorenz complying all the blood rushes south, leaving him lightheaded. He feels it almost as a dragging friction in his blood vessels, something hollowing out inside him to send a throbbing pulse throughout his body. It’s not the first time he’s been this turned on, but it is the first time he and Lorenz are both wearing all their clothes, barely touching, while it happens. 

Hanging by a thread from the dregs of his self-possession, he keeps his eyes on Lorenz’s face, not his hand, to watch, to recognize the instant he wraps those tempting slender fingers around himself. 

His eyelashes flutter, his lips part, and his head tilts back in surrender to pure sensation as a sultry sigh flows unimpeded on his next exhale. He needs to brace one of his hands on Claude’s leg for support, his fingers digging into his flesh. This time Claude lets him close his eyes, not saying anything, though they come open again on their own soon after, Lorenz’s gaze a simmering black. 

Claude moves his hand from Lorenz’s neck to the back of his head, pushing back his hair and keeping a hold of it there. He lets his eyes drag down Lorenz’s body; a heavy, gradual slide towards the cock fucking into his hand with short, irresistible thrusts. 

“Slower. Slower.” He guides him through it. Dry-mouthed, his need coiling tighter and tighter at the picture Lorenz makes, at the sight and evidence of his desire, swollen and dripping in his fist. Gods, and he is fully clothed. Claude thanks the stars for that—he cannot imagine possessing half this self-control if Lorenz were naked. He can almost see the ripple of lithe muscle under the clothes as things are, the lines of his torso and stomach tapering down into that waist he knows so well by now. Not that Lorenz all dressed except for the jutting line of his cock, those long fingers around himself, does not have its own charm. Even dressed, there is no hiding the trembling restrain, because Claude told him to go slow; no hiding the way the whipcord thighs part to widen his seat. Mesmerized, Claude watches the rhythmic glide of Lorenz’s hand over his slicked cock; fluid steadily builds at the slit, barely given a chance to spill before Lorenz is swiping his thumb over the head, dragging the foreskin back, back. 

“Fuck. Lorenz. You're doing so well. Doing so well for me." A muffled cry bursts out from Lorenz's clenched jaw, his hips lifting off the ground with sudden force. "That's it. You look amazing. I…” He is too hot under his clothes, sweat gathering beneath his collar, unable to think, with Lorenz soft cries and escalating sighs. 

He licks his lips, but before he has to jolt his brain back into place, a hand wraps around his wrist. At once, he eases the grasp on Lorenz’s hair, thinking he’s accidentally pulled too hard and hurt him, but that’s not it. “Please.” Lorenz sounds wrecked, his grip around his wrist bruising. It’s the only skin-on-skin contact they have. “I need—” His voice hitches, sentence unfinished, fractured into broken breaths. He recognises in it, and in the helpless rocking of his hips, that he is close. “I’m going to come,” Lorenz gasps. The frantic edge, more a request for permission than a warning, reminds Claude of what they are doing. 

“No,” he rasps out. “Stop. Not yet.” 

It is too late; Claude thinks, with Lorenz’s body curling forward, his forehead pressing to Claude’s hip as shudders wrack his body, that he’s come already. But when he lifts Lorenz’s head with a gentle touch to the nape of his neck and steps slightly back, looking down, he sees he is mistaken. Lorenz sucks in big gulps of air, and for a moment Claude fears he’s overstepped. Until he feels the flash of teeth over the skin of his wrist. Nibbling, biting, shaping up goosebumps. Half-lidded eyes meet his. “What next?” Lorenz rasps, his hair a mess matted to one side of his face, perspiration soaking it and giving his skin an alluring, unmistakable sheen. “I’m yours.” No shame left for this one unbridled confession. “Yours, to do with as you please.” 

Claude can’t take it anymore. Can’t take the blush of riotous colour hot on Lorenz’s cheeks, and the liquid weight of his satisfaction at doing what Claude says, despite not getting to come. Most of all, he can’t take his words. They stuck inside him, and are edged. 

With unsteady hands he unlaces his pants and pulls his cock out. He’s fucking leaking already. He strokes himself a couple of times to take the edge off—not an easy task, with Lorenz right there, wanting, looking like he can't string together more than two thoughts. 

Wanting, waiting. 

There is a second of hesitation, and then no more, as a quick glance reveals Lorenz is eager still for this. As eager as his words promise. I’m yours. 

What they both want coalesces. 

“Open your mouth,” says Claude. 

He gasps a quick inhale as Lorenz does as he is told, red-bitten lips parting, and then holds still, his tongue—an offer—almost coyly covering his bottom lip. And then Lorenz just waits, the quiver of desire running through him flooding the space between them until Claude is drowning in it. “Fuck,” Claude groans, tightening a hand around the base of his cock. What happens when Lorenz gives him head is usually out of his immediate control, Lorenz is the one to tease, alternating tantalising flicks with broad sweeps of his tongue; the one to take the lead, his throat a greedy clutch swallowing around Claude’s cock. 

Claude is almost tempted to give in and jerk off right there—once, twice, it would not take more than that to tumble into orgasm, streaking Lorenz’s face with white. Instead, he pushes with his thumb, guides his cock downwards. Downwards to meet damp breath, nudging Lorenz’s plush swollen lower lip, and to finally push into the thrilling wet give of his mouth, rubbing the head over the flat of his tongue. Little, aborted jerks, forwards and backwards, more maddening than anything, that make him hiss between clenched teeth, to watch the pupil devour the colour in Lorenz’s eyes as he tastes him, as precome and spit mix on his tongue and ease the glide forward. 

Eyelids falling to half-mast, breath going ragged, Lorenz takes it. There is no strain in it, his features softened, given over to uncomplicated bliss. Almost as if he’s forgotten his own need, exchanging that impending release for Claude’s. And that reaction, it emboldens Claude. The last push he needs to demand more: to let go. “Gonna take me deep.” Not a question. He adds, on an ongoing exhale, “Tap my thigh if you need me to back off.” And then he is pushing in, almost faltering when his cock bumps the roof of Lorenz’s mouth, snug on his tongue. But then Lorenz makes an encouraging sound, his jaw going slack, his hands clutching the back of Claude’s thighs, and Claude is gone. He grabs both sides of Lorenz’s head and brings him forward in an unrelenting slide to breach the tightness of his throat. Guiding the movement, choosing his own rhythm. 

His head drops back the first time he bottoms out, a string of slurred words spilling past his lips until every time he tries to speak a moan breaks out of him instead. Overwhelmed, he almost forgets he needs to pull back, let Lorenz breathe. He does forget, has forgotten, how good the slide back will feel, this one uncomparable pleasure seemingly untoppable. And as he holds Lorenz in place and rocks his hips back, a ringing throb sparks across skin, muscle, body whole. His movements go shaky, stuttering, his knees almost buckling with it. 

“Ah, ah—” He shudders into the next roll forward, hips rocking shallowly and then slowing down to grind deep, his cock twitching along with his pulse as Lorenz’s throat flutters around him. “You feel so good,” he pants, thumbing one corner of Lorenz’s stretched mouth. “Lorenz— So fucking good for me.” 

Lorenz moans as answer, hot and dirty and messy around Claude’s girth. 

It takes embarrassingly little time. But it is so, so tight, and Lorenz keeps making these sounds, clearly enjoying himself. And every time Claude pulls out, Lorenz’s tongue flattens up against his cock, dragging friction, seeking the slit of the head. That tongue that has no qualms about telling Claude, with merciless punctiliousness, about every single one of the flaws he finds with his plans, now given up to Claude’s whims, his pleasure. And he knows, when they step out there, its razor-edged sharpness will come back. He gets to have both. It is the last flash of thought before his fingers clench on Lorenz’s shoulder. Mute warning as his muscles grow impossible tense, hips shoving forward in two, three short, unchecked jerks that are the last unfurling. His cry echoes in the empty wide space as he comes. 

It hits him, hard. He wonders he does not pass out, with the way Lorenz hollows his cheeks to milk every last drop out of him, until he is oversensitive, almost dizzy, and stumbling a step back. 

With the approximate strength of a newborn calf, he tucks himself away and manages to half tie up his pants again. Lorenz is not looking at him, the back of his hand to his mouth as he wipes what he hasn’t managed to swallow. His arousal hasn't flagged down one bit. It sends one last scintilla of want up Claude’s spine, even when the very same weight of air feels like too much sensation to endure. 

Letting go with Lorenz those first few times had been easy, despite all the complicated rituals that had followed them through the years of their acquaintance; tumbling into bed with him, to dive into his body and get lost in his pleasure, in the way it seemed to surprise him at times, rendering him soft and enthusiastic at once. Meanwhile there'd been a certain routine; Claude's own wants pushed back, controlled—by none other than himself—until they wrecked a path through him, usually after Lorenz was spent and trembling in his arms, when it was easiest to pretend it was but a foregone conclusion to his day and not something he woke up longing for. When it was easiest to pretend Lorenz would not notice the sweet nothings murmured into the curve of his neck. 

There is no pretending now, their gazes holding fast. Lorenz may be the one on his knees, but Claude feels brought down. Hot, flushed. Not only from desire. He's been turned inside out, laid bare. 

Without looking away, he takes the hand still over Lorenz's mouth and puts his lips to the knuckles, licks across his skin, the palm of his hand, between his fingers. He tastes Lorenz, also himself. 

“Claude,” Lorenz pleads, voice trembling as he watches, enraptured.

“I’ll take care of you.” It is untested, unspoiled by tricks. He's never felt like this before. 

In Lorenz, no more burdens—not even this one Claude has just laid on his shoulders. Or not, only one more strain: delayed release, so close he must be able to taste it. 

Claude drops to his knees and kisses him hard, pushing open his lips to press as close as possible, groaning when he tastes himself in his mouth. He wanted to kiss him this morning, when Lorenz passed through the dining hall for half a toast and tea. He wanted to kiss him during the noon meeting, instead of talking about trade routes and bandit attacks. And he wanted to kiss him when he was on his knees and it seemed they were the only two people in the world. Lorenz's arms come up around him, answering the kiss breath for breath, at last taking; grabbing, clutching Claude’s shoulders and keeping him locked in the circle of his arms. 

At Claude’s momentum forward, Lorenz’s back bends into what must be an uncomfortable angle, until Claude braces himself with one hand on the floor and grips Lorenz’s backside with the other, to push his body up against his own and give his legs leverage to stretch. Lorenz groans, sore after so long kneeling, but soon his knees are gripping Claude’s sides, thighs parting wide and hips canting forward to rut against Claude’s stomach as Claude lowers him to the floor. 

When Lorenz’s mouth falls open, his moans scattering between them, Claude keeps kissing him. His chin, his cheek, his jaw. Every part he can reach. 

“Please, please,” Lorenz is gasping, back arching. “I can’t—” he sobs. 

Bracing his weight on an elbow, Claude gets his finger wet, spit-slicked, before yanking Lorenz’s pants down with his other hand and reaching down to slip his finger between Lorenz’s legs. 

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” 

It’s not as good as oil, only enough for the stretch of one finger, but Lorenz has no complaints as he teases around the rim, wet circles of sensation that after so long without rock Lorenz’s whole body, pale thighs trembling. Claude finally pushes his finger inside in a slow drag that has Lorenz digging his fingers in his back, his hoarse shout echoing. 

He can’t be more than a hair’s breadth away from coming. Claude angles his finger, grinds with the heel of his hand behind his balls, and Lorenz's head falls back. 

"Yes— Don't stop. Don't stop," Lorenz begs, words cracking into staccato moans. 

Making his way down his body, Claude takes his cock between his lips; bypassing any more artifices, he laves the head with his tongue. The spill of precome as Lorenz writhes under him, salt on his tongue, bestirs the drive of his mouth. His tongue grazes the spot under the head, past the tight fold of the foreskin. With one last pull of suction, his finger curling inside, Lorenz goes over the edge, spilling hot into Claude’s mouth in endless waves that crest with breathless exclamations as his muscles twitch, loosen. 

He waits until Lorenz softens in his mouth, hissing and oversensitive, to let go and gently pull up his clothes. Then he sags back and lies on his back, trying to breathe around this new feeling, Lorenz-shaped. Or, not new, not wholly. Half of it has been with him for longer than he cares to admit. And now the other half changes the shape into something lighter, something impossible. I'm yours. 

After a second, he reaches out with an arm and tugs Lorenz’s body over him, rolling him onto his chest and off the hard floor. Mostly—nothing to do about those endless legs. The weight of his strong body, now pliant, settles nicely above Claude, warm and familiar. 

They stay like that, breathing, breathing to ease the rhythm of their hearts, for so long Claude’s sweat cools on his skin, and he can feel the beginnings of night’s cold creeping up on them, the shadows across the ceiling very dark. Very dark, but not troubling. 

Lorenz hasn’t moved his face from the curve of Claude’s shoulder. 

“So,” Claude begins. “That was...” 

“Don’t.” 

“What? C’mon, you don’t know what I’m gonna say—” 

“I do not want to discuss it,” says Lorenz, in a very primp timbre despite the muffled quality of speaking with his head buried in Claude’s shoulder. 

Claude grins. He says, “What, ever?” 

“Yes. Ever!” Lorenz explodes with a small hiss. “Do not laugh!”

“So you don’t want to do it again?” 

“I—” Lorenz stammers. “I never said that,” he ends up mumbling. 

He is still quietly laughing as he puts his arms around Lorenz’s shoulders, holding him tightly. There’s no trace of tension in them, despite Lorenz’s words and refusal to emerge from his hiding place on Claude’s chest. 

“Well, alright. No need to discuss it. But I liked it. Liked it a lot.” 

He settles for running his fingers through Lorenz’s tangled hair, easing away the knots he’s probably put there himself. Lorenz will either fall asleep, which Claude hopes is not the case, because the floor is damned uncomfortable, or he will...

The faintest of movements draw his eyes down. Lorenz has tilted his head to angle a glance his way. 

“Yes, you did like it,” Lorenz says, flat statement, though his eyes are bright with it, with all that he’s probably remembering now, picking apart without the fog of his own arousal to hinder his thoughts. Blood rushes to Claude’s face, though thankfully the colour there will never match Lorenz’s fierce blush. 

He opts for making light of the situation, not as smoothly as he normally prefers. “Might have seen the goddess.” He gives a sidelong glance to his right, where the altar looms over them. 

Lorenz chokes, snapping his head back. “Don’t blaspheme.” 

“Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” he fires back, helplessly amused.

Lorenz’s eyebrows climb to his hairline. He freezes for a second, before letting out a soft, quiet laugh. “Yes,” he says. “I think I am done pretending after this.” 

Following, Claude goes up to one elbow as Lorenz starts sitting up. “I didn't mean…”

“No. I know, I know.” He shakes his head. “But everything I said was the truth. It wasn’t just spur-of-the-moment, or some sort of game. And you are perfectly aware of that. I feel like I am wholly transparent to you now.” 

Claude reaches out to take his hand, putting it on his chest. “More than before,” he agrees. “So am I to you. Is that bad? It was never about keeping my bed warm or whatever else you told yourself. Not for me.” 

“I hoped. I didn’t dare believe it.” He sighs. “You are very hard to read. You always have me at a disadvantage.”

Claude looks away, inhaling deeply. Before he can taste the shape of his thoughts he lets them go. “I wouldn't mind a thousand wars if the end result was getting to be with you, in any way you wanted.” He fixes his gaze down on their linked hands resting on his chest. “You know I’ll have to leave at some point. You know what my returning will mean, who I am, what my duties entail. Who I’ll become in the future. If I tell you I’m yours, do you want all that goes with me too?” 

A schism splits open inside him in the one second it takes Lorenz to answer. In the one second that stretches to a thousand as Lorenz takes his hand away from Claude. And then Lorenz is taking his face and leaning down to brush their lips together. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I want everything.” And he kisses Claude, in this ruined cathedral, like he already has it. 

No, they are not good with blind faith, but they know when their eyes are opened to the truth. 

**Author's Note:**

> i had a bunch of things to write and THIS was what jumped to the top and wouldn't leave me alone.... anyway, THANKS FOR READING!! :)


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